


Translation

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: The Outer Rim [23]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Family Bonding, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28400430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Din Djarin was a man of few words, but many languages.  Some might have thought the Child had no language at all.  Din Djarin and the Child grow to understand each other.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Series: The Outer Rim [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055645
Comments: 44
Kudos: 291
Collections: My favorite Mandalorian fics





	Translation

Din Djarin was a man of few words, but he spoke many languages.

His earliest memories, half-forgotten, were soft whispers of his parents’ native tongue. The Basic they spoke carried a sweet, slurred accent he could hear sometimes in dreams, fading as he grew older. He had known the name and sounds of their language once, but years among the Children of the Watch had long erased them.

He learned other words to replace them, lost the accent of his youth and exchanged it for one of the Outer Rim. He absorbed phrases and lessons in ancient Mando’a, wrote them in his mind in a way he could never forget, standing tall for lessons with the other foundlings. They learned the words in hand and bone and soul, paired with the battle training of body and mind, and the words blazed within him. They were a forge burning blue-white hot, transforming him slowly into a Mandalorian like his saviors. He spoke those words on the day they granted him his helmet, and he gladly covered his face, the fire within roaring with a newfound pride.

As a young man he traversed the Rim, face always hidden, ears always open. New words were needed for the work he found. He picked up enough Jawaese to trade with, though he bore little love for the scavengers; sometimes they were his only choice. He spoke their language haltingly, enough to do what he needed, his mouth straining to shape itself in ways near impossible for a human. If it was what the job needed, he’d do it.

His work brought him to worlds near and far, places where rule of law was an outright myth. He took a great deal of work on Tatooine, and soon realized his marks, if still planetside, always fled to the desert. 

He was no fool. He brought gifts in trade to the Sand People, meager things he could ill afford, but they sensed his respect, and they gave him words. He learned their signs, hands practicing the movements at night by their fires. He practiced until he understood the shape of the grammar, how the signs flowed one to the other, sentences constructed in the air before him. He asked them for aid, and they told him of the trespassers on their land.

The Guild worked often with the Hutts and their empires, and he found himself bristling at droids taking liberties with his Basic for their Hutt masters. Protocol droids weren’t the ones who’d devastated his world, of course, but they were soulless, empty things all the same. He practiced his Huttese in seedy bars, in market squares, rarely with marks who behaved themselves for a chance to stay out of carbonite for a little while. He spoke to the Hutts in their own language, and they learned, with time, to keep their droids back when dealing with the Mandalorian hunter. 

He picked up other snippets here and there, and understood more than he spoke in Twi’leki, Durese, Bocce. Language was just another tool, another weapon that could be wielded in service of the Way. He used it for little else.

Until he found the Child, and the words of the Creed flared deep in his bones.

* * *

The Child had no language, as far as he could tell. He tried all of them he had, both spoken and signed, on the journey to Sorgan. 

“What’s your name?”

“Where do you come from?”

“Why did the Imps want you?”

“Who do you belong to?”

The Child just looked at him with interest, no matter which language he tried. In desperation he even tried out curse words from a few he had no other point of reference for, feeling vaguely guilty for doing so, but it was the only other thing he could think to do. The Child watched him curiously, small green hands folded politely in his lap as if waiting for Din to finish. 

He ended with a muttered “dank farrik,” and leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. The Child tilted his enormous ears and blinked slowly, looking at him deep in concentration.

“Eee,” he cooed happily, and Din sighed, awkwardly patting the Child on the top of his head.

“That’s okay, kid. We’ll, uh, we’ll work on it.”

* * *

He watched the Child with the village children. They chattered to him eagerly in Basic, calling for him to follow them, patiently laying out the rules in their little games. A boy might lift the Child up in his arms, then pass him to a girl who would show him how to play with their game of counting sticks and stones. For his part the Child laughed and played with them as if he’d been there all his life.

He wondered if the kid could understand Basic, but if his mouth just didn’t work the right way to speak it. He’d never seen another of the kid’s kind, after all. He practiced with him at nighttime, just little things here and there, curiosity getting the better of him.

“Come here, kid.”

“That’s called soup. Sooooup. Can you -- hey, don’t spill it --”

“Don’t touch that.”

“I said, don’t touch that.”

“C’mon, kid, get outta there --”

Well, if the kid understood Basic, he sure had a funny way of showing it.

* * *

Peli Motto was a good mechanic. That wasn’t too surprising; spaceport towns usually had pretty good options. Anyone who couldn’t wield a spanner was weeded out pretty quickly. More surprising was the way she handled the kid. 

She sat in the landing zone on a shipping crate, the Child on her knee. He seemed content as she bounced him slightly up and down, letting out cheery little noises periodically and waving his hands.

“How do you know how to do that?” Din asked, examining the _Crest’s_ landing gear and checking the repair job. Everything looked to be in order. “He seems to like it.”

“Kids like bouncing,” she said matter-of-factly. “Doesn’t matter what species they are. They like bouncing, food, feeling safe. All the good stuff.”

He leaned against the landing gear, folding his arms across his chest. “He… didn’t say anything while I was gone, did he?”

She shook her head. “Nah. I think this little one’s too young for language yet. But I think he understands more than he lets on.”

Din’s mouth twitched in a smirk she couldn’t see. “You and me both. He’s stubborn, this one.”

She laughed. “Reminds me of you.”

* * *

_The Child_ was starting to become just ‘the child.’ He wasn’t sure when he stopped thinking of the kid so formally. Maybe it was a side effect of the past several weeks together, leap to leap, world to world. He was getting used to the little womp rat being there, messing with controls on the ship, getting into trouble, generally making a nuisance of himself.

Except for when he looked up at Din, his dark eyes open and trusting; except for when he fell asleep in the crook of Din’s arm instead of the blankets in his pram. 

He was _kid_ now, mostly. Sometimes _buddy_. Sometimes _pal_. _The Child_ was starting to be reserved for when Din talked to other people. In the _Razor Crest_ , just the two of them, he was just the kid, and Din was just himself.

* * *

He cradled the kid against his chest as the wind whipped past them, the Rising Phoenix carrying them back to the _Crest_ over the lava fields of Nevarro. The kid’s little hands clung to his cuirass, but there was no need; Din held him more tightly, more securely, than anything he’d ever carried in his life.

_A clan of two. You are as its father_. 

Dying sunlight glinted on the mudhorn signet, a reflection picked up through the slit in his helmet. He swallowed, then tilted his chin in towards his chest, making sure the kid was okay in the wind.

A little face turned upwards to look at him, big eyes wide, his mouth dropped open in surprise. Din chuckled a little, despite his aching head from the injury, despite the fate of the Tribe weighing upon him. The kid liked the ride. 

“Don’t worry, buddy,” he said into the wind. “I got you.”

* * *

The kid didn’t speak Basic. But he spoke something, and Din began to know more and more of what that was.

There was a little tilt of his head and shift of his ears for curiosity. A slight coo and wide-eyed expression for delight. An intent narrowing of the eyes with ears held stiff and back towards the tiny shoulders, especially when he wanted to do something that Din very much did not want him to do.

He tugged Din’s leg for food or to be picked up or changed. He stared at himself in the reflections of Din’s armor and sometimes reached out to touch the shadow faces in their smooth surfaces, looking up at Din in surprise when there was nothing there but beskar. He waited until Din looked away to play with knobs and buttons on the control console, and Din got better at always keeping an eye on the kid with his helmet turned just slightly towards him, enough to use his peripheral vision.

He found himself speaking more and more to the kid. Things he didn’t need to say, words that filled the little cockpit of the _Razor Crest_ with a warmth the place had never known. The words spilled out of him, and the kid soaked them up like sunshine.

“Good job back there. You were very brave.”

“Come on now, you know better than to mess with that. … see? I knew you did. Good.”

“Feeling hungry? Let’s see… I’ve got frog legs, bantha milk -- oh, there’s a thing of soup I can warm up for you. No, those cookies are for after dinner. You wanna grow big and strong, don’t you, little guy? Dinner first. Cookies later. If you behave yourself.”

“Time for bed, kid. No fussing. I can see how sleepy you are. Come on, I’ll come to bed too.”

“Night. Get some rest, okay?”

It wasn’t just words he used. He found a dozen, a hundred reasons during the day to reach out and smooth the kid’s robe collar, or carefully touch the edge of one oversized ear. He got used to the weight of the kid on his hip or nestled in one arm. His gloved fingertips were gentle, brushing against the kid’s cheek to clean his little face, checking his hands and feet for dirt or scratches. He rested a hand against the kid’s back for reassurance, brushed a hand over the curve of the back of his head to help the kid relax and fall asleep. He got used to small clawed hands nestled in his own. And sometimes the kid reached up to touch his helmet, little hand slipping under the brim, and Din let it stay.

* * *

Turned out there were other ways to talk. The Jedi turned to him in the misty night, firelight golden on her face, telling him years of tragic history, a constant fear, a lingering anger… a name. 

_Grogu._

It was hard to wrap his mind around at first. The name fit the kid in some ways -- short and kind of ugly, but in a way that turned itself around to be somehow endearing. But hearing the name lanced him through the heart, cauterizing like a blaster bolt. Grogu had a name, and had nearly lost it. He didn’t want that for him. Remembered, for an instant, how it had felt --

_But you had the Way. What does he have?_

He tried to help the kid -- Grogu -- with his powers, tried to show the Jedi what he could do. _He needs training. I have to make sure he gets it._ He held the little silver ball, proud as anything when Grogu summoned it to his small hand with a snap. But the Jedi’s refusal to take him slapped him in the face. 

He took Grogu back to the Crest that night, deep in thought, boots leaving little mark upon the loamy forest floor. Grogu watched his helmet with wide eyes. For a moment he felt a pang of jealousy. How many months had he been with the kid, and never found out half of what the Jedi told him in a moment’s conversation? 

“If I could have, I would have, kid,” he murmured. “...you know that, right?”

Grogu’s hand came up to twist into the cloth of his cowl, brushing against his neck. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, and the relief he felt was indescribable.

* * *

There hadn’t been enough _time._

One moment he was laughing in the cockpit, overwhelmed by the way Grogu looked up when Din said his name. One moment he was whooping when the kid used his powers, eagerly telling him he’d done good. One moment it was just the two of them, happy, hopeful, safe. 

And then the Jedi Seeing Stone lit up with a glow he didn’t understand, and Grogu slipped away from him.

He fought and Fett and Shand fought with him, and through it all he could only think, _Grogu. Kid. I’ll protect you!_

A messy, chaotic fight, blaster fire, a direct salvo. The Crest vanishing under a blinding flash, dark figures launching into the sky with precious cargo at a speed the Rising Phoenix couldn’t hope to match.

He failed. 

Grogu was gone.

And he had no words at all.

* * *

Din Djarin was a man of few words, but many languages.

Some might have thought the Child had no language at all.

But on an Imperial cruiser, standing before strangers, Din held his son close. He cradled him to say goodbye, and when the little hand brushed against the brim of his helmet, he lifted it without hesitation, despite the Creed written in bones and blood and beskar. 

Din trembled at the warmth, the softness, of that small hand brushing tenderly against his naked cheek. And when he opened teary eyes to gaze upon Grogu’s face, he knew exactly what his child was trying to say.

**Author's Note:**

> *big feels*


End file.
